


Paddling Out

by neontiger55



Category: White Collar
Genre: Angst, Gen, Post Season 3, Season 3 Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-01
Updated: 2012-07-01
Packaged: 2017-11-08 23:31:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/448767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/neontiger55/pseuds/neontiger55
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The first year goes like this.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Paddling Out

**Author's Note:**

> The very talented aisle_one has written a beautiful companion piece to this one, 'Some Time In Indonesia', which I highly recommend: http://aisle-one.livejournal.com/63956.html#cutid1

 

 

The first year goes like this:  
  
They travel the world restlessly and without purpose; there’s no one to see and nothing they want to steal. Mozzie is on a high, elated at the freedom they now have together and the possibilities that stretch out before them, the people he thinks they can become. Neal stays in step. After all, Mozzie has been in prison as long as he has.

Asia is beautiful and difficult and perfect. They spend the first few months on an Indonesian island so remote and alien it’s like they’ve stepped off the face of the earth and found somewhere new entirely. It’s the difference that makes it bearable; there’s nothing to remind him of what he’s lost. No traffic noise, no cigarette smoke, no skyscrapers, just trees and sand and birdsong. Neal tries to appreciate these things, to be still and quiet. Mozzie tells him it’s good for the soul, that eventually he’ll find clarity, his thoughts distilled and priorities simplified. But Neal’s mind is always seven steps ahead, and already he doesn’t like what he sees.

So, they move.  
  
Argentina calms him for a time, as he allows himself to be swept away by the noise and the chaos. Buenos Aires hits them with every cliché it has and Neal drowns in the colour. Venezuela is like an old friend, but South Africa takes them for all it can. It’s a harder world than Neal remembers, but he adjusts, becoming a little harder himself. He had forgotten how tiring it is to be forever in motion, to condense an entire life into one bag and just keep going. Or, maybe it’s because he’s not sure where he’s headed that the road seems so long.  
  
In that first year Neal finds Peter everywhere. On a plane, he looks at the passenger in front and sees the strong line of Peter’s shoulders and the curve of his neck. He sees his expressions – his disgruntled amusement, the wry quirk of his lips – on the faces of waiters and taxi drivers and tourists, can hear his voice cut above the chatter of a deafening crowd. He imagines himself passing Peter on a city street somewhere, their shoulders just brushing, knowing smiles playing on their lips.  
  
Mozzie thinks he’s going mad and Neal thinks he may be right. They retreat to France and Moz suggests a heist or a con, or even an afternoon’s pick pocketing to pass the time. They are in their old hunting ground now and Neal can smell the blood. It would be so easy to slip back into that life, like wearing a pair of old, beat up shoes, the leather comfortably worn and shaped by every past step. And as the months pass, that thought rests like a splinter under his nail. He worries and toys with it until his skin crawls. But, as much as he needs that rush, the relief, the familiarity, he can't; that wasn’t what Peter trusted him to do.   
  
So, they keep moving, keep living their strange version of freedom, waiting to be caught or found, whichever it might be when their castles of sand eventually fall.

 

 

* 

_End._


End file.
